This demo video gets its own post because the effort gone into this project has been frankly outlandish.
#vr
I finally resume updating my website. This new section collects a lot of different data visualisation projects in one convenient location. Come explore the gas in the Milky Way, the Virgo cluster, and the entire nearby Universe... and then take a walk along the Arecibo telescope in virtual reality and see the sky at radio wavelengths across the world.
Probably needs a good check for typos but that can wait.
This is rather nice. The #VR aspect is very limited though, just 360 degree images, not 3D. Matterport is quite annoying that way : they present low-resolution 3D models you can explore, but then when you dive in deeper it switches into the standard 2D-360 images. I mean, they're perfectly well-captured, they're just not as good as they could be. I guess my much-delayed ALMA in true VR project is still needed.
Just gave this #VR productivity app a go... I tried it before on the Quest 1, but couldn't really make head nor tail of it, plus the Q1's resolution was just not up to it.
With the Quest 3... I gotta say, mmm, this is really getting somewhere. For some reason when I tried it yesterday I had no luck at all moving windows between the virtual screens and opening a program would always open its window in a different screen to the one I opened it in.
Today I had no such issues. I very easily set up three giant virtual monitors in place of my one physical (admittedly also giant) monitor and I was able to drag apps between them no problem. Quality of display was easily good enough for astronomical data visualisation and source extraction : in fact, since the Q3 is quite bright, in some ways this was even better than the flatscreen. Not entirely mind you, there is still a tiny bit of pixilation that for gaming isn't even noticeable at all, but for work does become something that's, well, definitely there. Not really distracting, but you can't really avoid it either. But simply making the monitors bigger pretty nearly avoids this.
In terms of workflow, I'd say I'm at the "I'm intrigued, tell me more". I only had about a half hour before the battery ran out on the headset (it was rather less than 50% charged) and I didn't think to try the cable connection. But working on the virtual displays quickly became natural. I could work in one screen with a notes file in another to remind me of what to test. I sent an email without feeling distracted by being in VR. I kept my email open in another screen and never had to switch between workspaces to see what was going on. This definitely requires further investigation.
Of course what would really be fun would be to ditch the virtual monitor setup and have each program's window rendered as a separate, manipulatable virtual object. Let me strew my apps around my room like they really existed and really maximise the available space...
Totally exhausting day consisting of hordes of children exploring virtual worlds. First 45 minutes were an utter catastrophe. Everything that could go wrong, did, in rapid succession and repeatedly. Incredibly frustrating but thereafter everything worked. The delight when kids realise they can throw toilets off the top of Arecibo is quite special. One kid in particular would have spent the entire day there if his parents hadn't dragged him away. Another I'm convinced is the original reason tall buildings have signs saying don't drop pennies. A number of others had worrying tendencies to try and jump off (which you can't do, probably for the best though the results would have been hilarious).
#VR skepticism/cynicism remains bizarre to me. Everyone who tries it loves it. Never seen a single disappointed reaction. Pretty sure there are going to be lots of children begging for Quests this Christmas... I should be asking Meta for a sponsorship deal....
Tomorrow's open day. I'm repeating last year's #VR displays with a few minor updates : some labels and text in the Virgo Cluster, and an ALMA antenna floating next to Arecibo's azimuth arm. My plan to do the full ALMA array got scuppered by a combination of a lack of ready availability to the telescope schematics (I could ask someone, but never got around to it) and the urgent need to rebuild my website (still ongoing). So, putting it inside the Arecibo environment saves a lot of setup work and gives a nice way to compare the scales.
My initial idea was to put it at the bottom of the Arecibo dish. But this gets somewhat awkward, needing to re-create materials for the dish which I don't want to muck around with, plus it's difficult for users to reach anyway, needing a lot of teleport meshes to get them down such a large distance. So a high-altitude floating antenna is an odd but serviceable solution which involves the least amount of effort. The annoying thing is that any adjustments to the meshes require 10 minutes to recompile. And this keeps switching my audio output to the headset and insists on playing the background audio that's included, which I can't mute without killing the whole program. It's very annoying.
Anyway, busy busy. The last two days (and evenings !) have been pretty much nothing but preparations. Tomorrow is 10-4/5 for the public, which means ~9-5:30 for the rest of us. Last year that was a continuous, non-stop stream of visitors for the whole session. It's a lot of fun, but it's bloody tiring too. Currently I'm at the stage of having achieved a floating telescope and now having to mess around with all the boring extraneous stuff.
I suspect this is an atypical Friday evening. I'll be glad when it's over.
https://www.asu.cas.cz/articles/2188/19/den-otevrenych-dveri-na-prazskem
Quest 3 releases the day before I hit the big four-oh... a purchase may have to be made...
Though unlike the reviewer, I didn't find any extreme difference between the Quest 2 (we have them in work for outreach) and the Quest 1, certainly not worth the upgrade at the time. The extra resolution and performance is nice, but incremental. But the full-colour passthrough of the Quest 3, combined with still more performance upgrades... mmm.... demos at Meta Connect looked pretty damn awesome. Bit surprised he's not into that more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpUIndlsV78&ab_channel=VirtualRealityOasis
